John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a trusted Democratic operative, will join the White House staff as a senior counselor to President Barack Obama, two persons familiar with the move said late Monday.

Podesta will take his place at the White House at a critical time for Obama as his health care law tries to shake itself off from a disastrous enrollment rollout and as the president seeks to re-establish his agenda going into a midterm election year.

Mr. Podesta is a world class spinner....Valerie must have approved this....Pete Rouse is leaving? You can expect slicker mendacity and the transparency to total opaque......Respected? Feared is more like it.

President Obama is hearkening to Bill Clinton days, calling on the former presidents chief of staff, John Podesta, to help sell some of his more controversial second-term agenda items and pave the way for better poll numbers.

Mr. Podesta has worked in a quiet, behind-the-scenes manner for Mr. Obamas transition to office after the 2008 elections. But now hes formally joining the inner circle in the White House, signing on to an adviser role for a year, The Washington Post reported.

Mr. Obamas turn to Mr. Podesta comes at a critical time. The Obamacare rollout has proven a difficult mountain to climb, leading the president to shelve some of his other promised initiatives for a time, including immigration. The presidents also fighting a massive public relations battle, with recent polls showing the public neither trusts nor admires him to the same degree that swept him into office in the first place.

damage control for Odumbo. too much juvenille antics. Demorats want little manchild to grow up. Desparation on the part of Obama he needs to get the mojo back or his wet dream of the Obamareich is over

I would agree....kinda like putting two male grizzly bears in the same room. I suspect that several Senators finally stood up and said that Jarrett was not capable of doing the job, and wanted a 2nd person to start cleaning up screw-ups.

You have to admit this....of the ten individuals who run the President’s schedule and his master plan...NONE of them had any background in DC or the House/Senate operations. Podesta has a vast amount of experience at planning out bills and getting general cooperation planned ahead of time.

I would agree....Jarrett will demand weekly activity reports on this guy, and he will absolutely not pay any attention to her (probably getting his own thirty minutes a day with the President without her in the room).

In short, Podesta showed the Clintons that they could gain by force what they might fail to achieve through legislation. “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kind of cool,” quipped White House aide Paul Begala to The New York Times on July 5, 1998, in response to questions about the Clintons’ growing disdain for the will of Congress.
Project Podesta’s most ambitious exercise was the war on Yugoslavia which Clinton launched by executive order on April 13, 1999, in defiance of the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.

In September 2012, Podesta joined representatives of 50 U.S. companies — 10 of which had ties to the Podesta Group, a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm founded by John Podesta and his brother Tony — on a State Department- and U.S. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored four-day tour of Cairo, Egypt, which was now led by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi. The purpose of the trip was to deliver the message that Egypt is open for business, and the U.S. business community is ready to invest.

Maybe Podesta is to replace Jarrett. She is starting to attract attention and they figure it’s a good time for a transition. She will go off and make millions as a “consultant “ or find some taxpayers to squeeze.

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